Once again, it's New Year's Eve, and so time to take a final look at some of the lesser-noted stories of the past year:
• First, what amounts to an update -- in this "last look" column exactly one year ago, I noted that Spencer Elden had sued a lot of folks involved in creating the album cover for the "grunge rock" group Nirvana's record, Nevermind. In case you've forgotten, Elden was the infant whose parents were paid $200 about thirty years ago to use his photo on Nevermind's cover. Elden floats just underwater in a swimming pool, with all of his, um, . . . little boy body parts visible. (A dollar bill on a fishhook trolls in the water just out of his reach, as a kind of "bait.")
Elden, who was four months-old at the time, had known about his album cover notoriety for most of his life. But in 2021 Elden brought the lawsuit, seeking millions of dollars under a law that relaxed the statute of limitations for victims of child pornography.
Baited by the Almighty Dollar, you might say.
A year ago I said that, "for a variety of sound legal reasons," the federal district court had dismissed Elden's lawsuit. But as Rick Perry once put it, "Oops."
Because, punctually, about 10 days ago the federal appeals court reinstated Elden's case -- though only on procedural grounds. Specifically, the court said that each time a Nevermind album was sold, it was a "re-publication" and therefore the statute of limitations restarted indefinitely.
Whether the image is actually "child pornography" will be up to a jury. An attorney for Nirvana said that they would "defend this meritless case with vigor and expect to prevail."
• Back in April, that same federal appeals court ended a long-running legal drama that began in 2017, when a woman named Susan Porter was cited for violating a California Vehicle Code section that prohibits the use of a car's horn except "to insure safe operation," or as a car theft alarm.
Porter was cited because she gave a series of short honks, totaling 14 (who keeps track of this???) while driving past a protest to show solidarity with the protestors' message. A sheriff's deputy overheard her, however, and cited her because those honks were neither "to insure safe operation" nor to prevent a theft. The ticket was dismissed because the deputy failed to show up in court -- perhaps realizing how silly the whole thing was?
Instead of being relieved to have avoided a fine and/or point on her license, Porter sued the State of California, arguing the law was an unconstitutional violation of her First Amendment right to engage in "expressive honking." But the trial court dismissed Porter's case, and by a 2-1 vote, in a 60-page opinion (nearly half of it the dissent), the appeals court agreed.
It's a pity, though, that Porter didn't say that she honked to show solidarity with a religious cause. The current Supreme Court will strike down any law that allegedly violates any real or imagined "religious liberty"; that court would likely have taken an "Expressive Honking for Jesus" case in a heartbeat.
• Finally, California once again demonstrated that it can't help itself when it comes to Official State Emblems (Embla? Embolisms?) Just since 2000, it has added nearly a dozen, including: an official state lichen; an official state sport (surfing -- take that, Hawaii!); an official state dinosaur and an official state fossil; an official state military museum; an official state gold rush ghost town; an official state silver rush ghost town; an official state Vietnam veterans war memorial and an official state LGBTQ veterans memorial; and an official state grass.
No, not that grass -- purple needlegrass.
Anyway, apparently not to be outdone by New Mexico (which, as I wrote about a few weeks ago, recently adopted an Official State Aroma -- the fragrance of roasting green chiles), California added to its metastasizing list of emblems by adopting an Official State Mushroom.
No, once again -- not that mushroom. Instead, it's the "California golden chanterelle," a trumpet-shaped orange fungus frequently found beneath oak trees, especially after a rain. The bill that added the one-sentence statute "officially" designating the golden chanterelle as California's own was introduced by a six-paragraph justification, including such helpful observations as "Mushrooms are important for both wildlife and people" and "California is home to an uncounted diversity of mushroom species."
So why, then, single out this one?
Well, it was undoubtedly all those lobbying dollars from Big Mushroom.
Now if the Legislature could just do something to close the State's multi-billion dollar deficit, but . . . nah.
Frank Zotter, Jr. is a Ukiah attorney.
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